scholarly journals Smartphones and Close Relationships: The Case for an Evolutionary Mismatch

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sbarra ◽  
Julia Leah Briskin ◽  
Richard Bennett Slatcher
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Evolutionary Mismatch ◽  
The Social ◽  
Integrative Study ◽  
Smartphone Use

In Press, Perspectives on Psychological Science. Accepted, 11.2.2018This final accepted version may differ from published version as a function of changes that emerge during the copyediting process.This paper introduces and outlines the case for an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviors that help form and maintain close social relationships. As psychological adaptations that enhance human survival and inclusive fitness, self-disclosure and responsiveness evolved in the context of small kin networks to facilitate social bonds, to promote trust, and to enhance cooperation. These adaptations are central to the development of attachment bonds, and attachment theory is middle-level evolutionary theory that provides a robust account of the ways human bonding provides for reproductive and inclusive fitness. Evolutionary mismatches operate when modern contexts cue ancestral adaptations in a manner that does not provide for their adaptive benefits. This paper argues that smartphones and their affordances, while highly beneficial in many circumstances, cue our evolved needs for self-disclosure and responsiveness across broad virtual networks and, in turn, have the potential to undermine immediate interpersonal interactions. We review emerging evidence on the topic of technoference, defined as the ways in which smartphone use may interfere with or intrude into everyday social interactions (either between couples or within families). The paper concludes with an empirical agenda for advancing the integrative study of smartphones, intimacy processes, and close relationships.

scholarly journals Smartphones and Close Relationships: The Case for an Evolutionary Mismatch

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Sbarra ◽  
Julia L. Briskin ◽  
Richard B. Slatcher
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Evolutionary Mismatch ◽  
The Social ◽  
Integrative Study ◽  
Smartphone Use

This article introduces and outlines the case for an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviors that help form and maintain close social relationships. As psychological adaptations that enhance human survival and inclusive fitness, self-disclosure and responsiveness evolved in the context of small kin networks to facilitate social bonds, promote trust, and enhance cooperation. These adaptations are central to the development of attachment bonds, and attachment theory is a middle-level evolutionary theory that provides a robust account of the ways human bonding provides for reproductive and inclusive fitness. Evolutionary mismatches operate when modern contexts cue ancestral adaptations in a manner that does not provide for their adaptive benefits. We argue that smartphones and their affordances, although highly beneficial in many circumstances, cue humans’ evolved needs for self-disclosure and responsiveness across broad virtual networks and, in turn, have the potential to undermine immediate interpersonal interactions. We review emerging evidence on the topic of technoference, which is defined as the ways in which smartphone use may interfere with or intrude into everyday social interactions. The article concludes with an empirical agenda for advancing the integrative study of smartphones, intimacy processes, and close relationships.

scholarly journals Three Strategies for Describing Social Interactions of Adolescents in a Multicultural Environment—Indicators for the Quality of Life Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (15) ◽  
pp. 8166
Author(s):  
Alicja Szerląg ◽  
Arkadiusz Urbanek ◽  
Kamila Gandecka
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Life Assessment ◽  
Multicultural Environment ◽  
Multicultural Community ◽  
The Social

Background: The analysis has involved social interactions in a multicultural environment. The social context has been defined by the Vilnius region (Lithuania), where national, religious, and cultural differences exist across generations (multicultural community). The space of “social relationships”, as one of the modules of the WHO quality of life assessment, has been studied. An innovation of the research has been related to the analysis of the phenomenon of community of nationalities and cultures as a predictor of quality of life (QoL). The social motive of the research has been the historical continuity (for centuries) of the construction of the Vilnius cultural borderland. Here, the local community evolves from a group of many cultures to an intercultural community. Interpreting the data, therefore, requires a long perspective (a few generations) to understand the quality of relationships. We see social interactions and strategies for building them as a potential for social QoL in multicultural environments. Methods: The research has been conducted on a sample of 374 respondents, including Poles (172), Lithuanians (133), and Russians (69). A diagnostic poll has been used. The respondents were adolescents (15–16 years). The research answers the question: What variables form the interaction strategies of adolescents in a multicultural environment? The findings relate to interpreting the social interactions of adolescents within the boundaries of their living environment. The description of the social relations of adolescents provides an opportunity to implement the findings for further research on QoL. Results: An innovative outcome of the research is the analysis of 3 interaction strategies (attachment to national identification, intercultural dialogue, and multicultural community building) as a background for interpreting QoL in a multicultural environment. Their understanding is a useful knowledge for QoL researchers. The data analysis has taken into account cultural and generational (historical) sensitivities. Therefore, the team studying the data has consisted of researchers and residents of the Vilnius region. We used the interaction strategies of adolescents to describe the category of “social relationships” in nationally and culturally diverse settings.

How Relationship Satisfaction Influences Post-Pandemic COVID-19 Anxiety: A Four-Wave Study in China

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Ou ◽  
yunhanqi ◽  
Ke Zhang ◽  
Yuexiao Du ◽  
Yihang He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Psychological Distress ◽  
Relationship Satisfaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Perceived Social Support ◽  
The Social

The social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic exerts lasing impacts on people’s mental health. However, whether and how people’s pre-existing positive social relationships can serve as stable reserves to alleviate people psychological distress following the disaster remains unknown. To address the question, the current study examined whether pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction would predict post-pandemic COVID-19 anxiety through middle-pandemic perceived social support and/or gratitude using four-wave data in China (N = 222, 54.50% female, Mage = 31.53, SD = 8.17). Results showed that people’s COVID-19 anxiety decreased from the peak to the trough pandemic stage; perceived social support increased markedly from the pre-pandemic to the peak and remained stable afterwards, while relationship satisfaction remained unchanged throughout. Further, it was middle-pandemic perceived social support, but not gratitude, mediated the association between pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction and post-pandemic COVID-19 anxiety, indicating perceived social support played a more crucial role than gratitude in this process. Last, it is suggested to distinguish perceived social support from gratitude as two different components of social interactions.

scholarly journals The Marquis of Anglesey: working and social relationships on a Dorset estate (c. 1812–1844)

Rural History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Carol Beardmore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Agricultural History ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Standing Timber

Abstract The Marquis of Anglesey on his Dorset estate was an absentee landlord who maintained close relationships with his estate through extensive correspondence with his land agent William Castleman. The surviving letters are a very rich source by which to examine the minutiae of rural life and a way to reconstruct social and working relationships within the nineteenth-century English landed estate. By focusing on a range of customary and unwritten rights, this article will consider issues such as how tenants navigated renegotiation of their leases, sought rent abatements or compensation for damage to their crops from hunting. Working and social relationships on such an estate were closely interlinked, as is widely shown here. The article also raises more contentious estate issues such as who had the rights to fallen and standing timber, the customs affecting courts, the repair of churches, and the responsibilities for building and maintaining schools. Throughout, the issue of ‘social control’ is assessed. Together the range of documented work and social interactions provide a fuller picture of the functioning of a southern English great estate in the early nineteenth century, and allow us to examine this rural community beyond the remit of its agricultural history.

scholarly journals How does cognition shape social relationships?

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1756) ◽  
pp. 20170293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia A. F. Wascher ◽  
Ipek G. Kulahci ◽  
Ellis J. G. Langley ◽  
Rachael C. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Individual Variation ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Evolutionary Consequences

The requirements of living in social groups, and forming and maintaining social relationships are hypothesized to be one of the major drivers behind the evolution of cognitive abilities. Most empirical studies investigating the relationships between sociality and cognition compare cognitive performance between species living in systems that differ in social complexity. In this review, we ask whether and how individuals benefit from cognitive skills in their social interactions. Cognitive abilities, such as perception, attention, learning, memory, and inhibitory control, aid in forming and maintaining social relationships. We investigate whether there is evidence that individual variation in these abilities influences individual variation in social relationships. We then consider the evolutionary consequences of the interaction between sociality and cognitive ability to address whether bi-directional relationships exist between the two, such that cognition can both shape and be shaped by social interactions and the social environment. In doing so, we suggest that social network analysis is emerging as a powerful tool that can be used to test for directional causal relationships between sociality and cognition. Overall, our review highlights the importance of investigating individual variation in cognition to understand how it shapes the patterns of social relationships. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities’.

The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostadin Kushlev ◽  
Ryan Dwyer ◽  
Elizabeth W. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sampling Studies ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Smartphone Use

Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.

Attachment to the Physical Dimension of Places

2002 ◽  
Vol 91 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1177-1182 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Carmen Hidalgo ◽  
Bernardo Hernández
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Previous Contact

Social relationships had been important in explanation and prediction of attachment to places. Although some have asserted the importance of physical aspects of the environment in the formation of attachment ties to a place, the social environment is required for the formation of bonds to a place, although strong emphasis on the social aspect has been questioned and the importance of the physical environment noted. The present objective in two studies was to test whether college students ( ns = 30 and 27) show a preference for a place they know, independently of the social interactions developed in them. Results confirmed the hypothesis, i.e., after a very brief stay in a certain place with nobody else there, these college students preferred that place to another with which they had not had previous contact.

scholarly journals Is Well-Being Associated with the Quantity and Quality of Social Interactions?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie Sun ◽  
Kelci Harris ◽  
Simine Vazire
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Method Evidence ◽  
The Moment

Social relationships are often touted as critical for well-being. However, the vast majority of studies on social relationships have relied on self-report measures of both social interactions and well-being, which makes it difficult to disentangle true associations from shared method variance. To address this gap, we assessed the quantity and quality of social interactions using both self-report and observer-based measures in everyday life. Participants (N = 256, 3,206 observations) wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an unobtrusive audio recorder, and completed experience sampling method (ESM) self-reports of their momentary social interactions, happiness, and feelings of social connectedness, four times each day for one week. Observers rated the quantity and quality of participants’ social interactions based on the EAR recordings from the same time points. Quantity of social interactions was robustly associated with greater well-being in the moment and on average, whether they were measured with self-reports or observer reports. Conversational (conversational depth and self-disclosure) and relational (knowing and liking one’s interaction partners) aspects of social interaction quality were also generally associated with greater well-being, but the effects were larger and more consistent for self-reported (vs. observer-reported) quality variables, within-person (vs. between-person) associations, and for predicting social connectedness (vs. happiness). Finally, although most associations were similar for introverts and extraverts, our exploratory results suggest that introverts may experience greater boosts in social connectedness, relative to extraverts, when engaging in deeper conversations. This study provides compelling multi-method evidence supporting the link between more frequent and deeper social interactions and well-being.

‘Neurosis' and the Personal Social Environment

1993 ◽  
Vol 162 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. P. Sims ◽  
D. H. Heard ◽  
C. E. Rowe ◽  
M. M. P. Gill ◽  
V. Maddock
Keyword(s):  
Inner City ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Day Treatment ◽  
Interview Schedule ◽  
Neurotic Disorder ◽  
The Social

The Interview Schedule for Social Interactions (ISSI) was used to assess the social environment of 65 British inner-city patients suffering from severe neurotic disorder; all patients were offered a 12-week course of intensive day treatment with an educational and psychodynamic basis. Compared with a general population in Canberra, the neurosis sufferers had lower (morbid) scores on the ISSI for the extent and quality of their social relationships. Of the 34 subjects who completed treatment and attended for the post-treatment investigation, 21 attained a PSE score below the level for ‘caseness'. Twenty-five subjects who attended for follow-up at 18–24 months had improved significantly on all four of the standard ISSI measures, although they had not done so immediately after treatment. This suggests that although symptoms may improve at the time of treatment, social relationships improve only over several months.

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